


Thoughts On The End Of The World

by FictionPenned



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: Vanya sits cross-legged on the sofa, curled fingers resting softly against her pursed lips as she contemplates the end of one world and the beginning of another.She has grown used to being a person largely devoid of history. When the doctors shown bright lights in her eyes and gauged her responses to a dozen questions, they said that it was doubtful that she would ever recover her lost memories. When no one responded to the notices stapled to telephone poles and hung in shop windows, she figured that if she ever had people who knew her, they were dead or lost or hundreds of miles away from here. It was a difficult realization, at first, but in its aftermath, she resolved to build herself a new life day by day and brick by brick. She built her identity around Sissy and Harlan and being a caretaker. She learned that she was patient and kind and largely good natured. She combatted the void of the past with a determined focus on the future.But now, entirely unexpectedly, a family has stumbled into her life.Written for Fic In A Box 2020.
Relationships: Sissy Cooper/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Thoughts On The End Of The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kameiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kameiko/gifts).



Vanya sits cross-legged on the sofa, curled fingers resting softly against her pursed lips as she contemplates the end of one world and the beginning of another.

She has grown used to being a person largely devoid of history. When the doctors shown bright lights in her eyes and gauged her responses to a dozen questions, they said that it was doubtful that she would ever recover her lost memories. When no one responded to the notices stapled to telephone poles and hung in shop windows, she figured that if she ever had people who knew her, they were dead or lost or hundreds of miles away from here. It was a difficult realization, at first, but in its aftermath, she resolved to build herself a new life day by day and brick by brick. She built her identity around Sissy and Harlan and being a caretaker. She learned that she was patient and kind and largely good natured. She combatted the void of the past with a determined focus on the future.

But now, entirely unexpectedly, a family has stumbled into her life.

They do not look like her or act like her or speak like her, but they stir an unmistakably fond sense of familiarity within her heart. She thinks that her body remembers them, even if her mind doesn’t, and she feels joy and relief and grief in turn. To know that she has a family somewhere else is to shake the foundations of her self-constructed identity.

She is a Hargreeves, they said, but she still looks into the mirror and finds herself trying out Sissy’s surname on her tongue and idly twisting the pads of her fingers around the vacant space on her left finger where a wedding ring would sit if she was allowed to marry the woman who found her and saved her and took her in when their lives collided.

Vanya thinks she loves these newfound, slightly haphazard siblings with some instinctual part of her being, but she loves Sissy, too.

Vanya loves Sissy with the depth and breadth with which she deserves to be loved, rather than the hard, entitled possessiveness with which Sissy's dreadful husband claims to love her.

In a new world, in a perfect world, she thinks that she would like to rescue Sissy the way that Sissy rescued her after that first meeting, to steal her and Harlan away and start a new life away from Carl and fear and threats. However, she is also painfully aware that no world is perfect, and that opening a door often allows the things that are already inside to slip through your fingers and escape into the night, never to be seen again.

Vanya does not want new beginnings to mean choosing between the family that she doesn’t remember and the family that she does.

She wants it to mean having both, and loving both equally.

The soft, worn cushions of the couch move beneath her as Sissy sits down, primly crossing her ankles beneath her and folding her ankles in her lap. “You all right, Vanya?” Her voice is warm and smooth and melodious, carrying the promise of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night.

Vanya’s hand falls away from her face as she forces a false, tight-lipped smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

When Sissy meets the claim with a knowing stare and nudging quiet, Vanya tacks on an insistent, “Really, I’m fine.”

The sigh that tumbles from Sissy’s lips proves that the other woman doesn’t buy the claim. “It’s okay if you’re not, Vanya. _Really_.” It’s an echo of Vanya’s own words, reflected back at her with small changes that completely alter the meaning. Sissy reaches out her hands, wrapping them around Vanya’s own and offering a gentle squeeze. “Is it about your visitors earlier? Are you remembering things?”

Vanya shakes her head. “Sometimes I think I might be remembering them, but it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s wishful thinking.”

Sissy leans forward slightly, blonde curls caressing the lines of her collarbone as she says, “They seem nice, if a bit strange.”

The observation manages to turn the fake smile into a real one, and indeed, Vanya almost feels as though she might be able to manage a laugh.

 _Almost_.

“We’re all a bit strange, aren’t we? I’m certainly strange.”

There’s a quiet exhale of breath, and a current of air washes over Vanya’s lips as the space between her face and Sissy’s is reduced to a nearly imperceptible matter of heartbeats and millimeters and idle desires.

“You’re not strange. You’re wonderful. I don’t know what I’d do without you most days.”

The lines around Vanya’s eyes crease. They speak to laughter and joy that she doesn’t remember experiencing, but she can imagine sharing those moments with the newcomers in her life. They treated her warmly, like someone who was worth missing. Like someone who they want around. Like someone with whom they shared a fond, if slightly troubled, history. “You know better than anyone that strange can often be wonderful.”

There is a shared smile, a darting of gazes, a brief, pensive focus on each other’s mouths.

It becomes not a matter of _if_ a kiss will pass between them, but _when_.

Sissy steels herself with another breath. One of the hands holding tightly onto Vanya’s finally lets go, gently wrapping itself around the back of the woman’s neck as that infinitesimal space is finally reduced to electricity and love and a burning, overwhelming _longing_.

When they part, a thought occupies the newly vacant space on Vanya’s tongue. “There are others, apparently. They want me to come meet them tomorrow. Do you want to go with me?”

She would like the company, but she also knows that someone has to keep an eye on Harlan, and Carl isn’t likely to do it himself.

Sissy, it seems, has the same thought. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as her eyes slide sideways. “I’d love to Vanya, but my son —“

Vanya leans forward, rejoining their hands and offering a comforting squeeze of her own. “It’s okay. Really. I’m sure they’ll stop by some other time.”

“We could split a dinner.”

Vanya nods, and there’s a crunch of gravel in the driveway.

Instinctively, the two women move to opposite sides of the couch, but when their eyes meet, the space feels just as tight, just as flushed, just as full of yearning and understanding as it had a moment ago.

 _Maybe this isn’t a matter of a single ending and a single beginning,_ Vanya decides, _but a dozen converging paths_.

It is an oddly comforting thought, and it carries her not only through this moment, but the next, and the one after that, all the way up until the first time she finds herself surrounded by all the siblings that she thought she’d never have.


End file.
